express-named-router

A wrapper for Express JS routes definition which defines named routes

Installation

npm install express-named-router

Setup

Just initialize the wrapper like this

var namedRouter = require('express-named-router');

...

namedRouter.initForApplication(app, {
    registerAppHelpers: true //Makes named routes accessibles in app.locals
});

Usage

You can still register your routes as usual, but if you want you can

app.namedRoute('contacts', {via: 'get', path: '/contact', handler: routes.contact.index, middlewares: []});

In your app.locals, therefore in your views and templates, you will find:

routes.contactsPath(); //returns /contacts
routes.contactsURL(); //returns http://<hostname>:<port>/contacts

For your node scripts, use namedRouter.get('contacts')

namedRouter.get('contacts')

for the same purpose.

Route parameters

When calling, let's say with the previous example, contactsPath(), and the associated route have parameters (i.e. contacts/:type would have the :type parameter in it), you can specify them like this

routes.contactsPath({
    type: 'cellPhone'
});

This would return '/contacts/cellPhone'. If 'type' is not found in the parameters, it will be appended as query string parameter.

Parameters with non-matching arguments will be ignored.

API

var namedRouter = require('express-named-router');

• namedRouter.namedRoute(name, options) adds a named route to application router
• namedRouter.routes contains all route functions (i.e. namedRouter.routes.contactsPath())
• namedRouter.get(name) gets the original route registered for a named route
• namedRouter.route(name) is equivalent to namedRouter.routes.Path()

Status

QUITE STABLE

Notes

This is usefull for "static" routes, but not so usefull when dealing with complex regexp routes. You can still use the named routes to register routes with regexp in the express router, but the returned string (the regexp) would be pointless for view rendering purposes.

License

Released under BSD license.